270 DAYS LATER

791,000 Facebook fans

43,000Twitter followers

10,000 Tumblr followers

1. Find interesting content that should be shared

2. Improve the layout and framing

3. Post it to your site for lots of exposure

4. Promote! Spread the word about the post ...so that the world will remember that there are more important things to ponder than Honey Boo Boo

5. Rake in the profits

6. And this actually works?

UPWORTHY WENT LIVE ON

March 26, 2012 Founded by

People have to click and share the heck out of your content!

a hero a meaningful/inspiring story something that draws on emotion posting at the right time and place a villain

a hero a villain a meaningful/inspiring story something that draws on emotion posting at the right time and place

One website changeD the internet forever.HOW CAN YOU DO IT, TOO?

How do you make that one thing you made go super viral and stuff?

KEYS to viral content

what does viral even mean?

Shares per view Clicks per share Viral?

LOW

HIGH

LOW

HIGH

LOW

LOW

HIGH

HIGH

NOPE

KINDA???

MEH, NOT SO MUCH

HELL YEAH BUDDY!

Where do people share?According to Shareaholic's Q4 study of social media traffic referrals:

User eXperience is all about ease for your audience

what to frame

Make it really really really really easy to share your content on Facebook

This is a big part of Upworthy,s successThey come up with at least

25 headlinesfor every post and then pick the most effective one.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Don't sexualize your headlines in a way your mom wouldn’t approve of.

Upworthy shares increased by 398% after they added scrolling share buttons

Share textThe HeadlineThe Excerpt The Share Image The Tweet Your Mom That’s what Upworthy says anyway... and they aren’t kidding — middle-aged women are the most prolific sharers on the internet

Do titles really make that muchof a difference? Let,s see:Here are two different titles used to share the same video:

december 03, 2012

Iowa House Democrats YouTube channel title:

“Zach Wahls Speaks About Family”

MoveOn.org title:

“Two Lesbians Raised a Baby and This is

What They Got”

1 million views 17 million views

( MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION, ACCORDING TO UPWORTHY )

Eli PariserMoveOn.org

Chris Hughes Facebook

Peter KoechleyThe Onion

Adam MordecaiHoward Dean

Presidential Campaign

Framing is the optimal placement of various aspects of your post

(Seriously, just ask my mom.)

Headlines must have an element of mystery without being overly vague

Follow This

One Tip

and...Never

Diet Again!

A popup asking the audience to “like” them on Facebook increased “likes” by 419%

FRAMING IS VITAL FOR VIRAL

HEAdlines

UX . user experience

What makes people share things anyway?

Keep testing the reactions and shares for various types of content Testing

10k views 100k views 300k views 400k views 500k views 1 million views

56%

5%1.9% 1.1% 0.7% 0.3%

Remember that you’ve already won the attention of your audience — it’s their friends and their friends’ friends that you want

the Difficulty Meter

these 5

Mitt Romney Accidentally Confronts a Gay Veteran, Awesomeness Ensues

Bully Calls News Anchor Fat, News Anchor Destroys Him on Live TV

A Tea Partier Decided to Pick a Fight with a Foreign President. It Didn’t Go So Well

Move Over Barbie - You’re Obsolete

BOOM, ROASTED: Here’s Why You Don’t Ask a Feminist to Hawk Your Sexist Product

Number of posts Number of views

that,s only 5 posts in 10 months

You’ll spend far too much time clicking around these sites

Every post baits your curiosity to click on another post...and so on

These websites paint a curated, often inaccurate view of the world

They are often more inspirational than enlightening

“Viral mills” such as Upworthy and Buzzfeed are huge on the internet

Is there a downside to Upworthy?

Eli Pariserauthor of

Sources: slideshare.net/Upworthy/how-to-make-that-one-thing-go-viral-just-kiddingbetabeat.com/2013/10/dishing-out-insulin-how-feel-good-viral-machines-like-upworthy-and-buzzfeed-filter-reality

PRESENTED BY:

FacebookThis is where the majority of the audience is from.

Percentages are from a Shareaholic Q4 2013 study on all social media referrals from over 200,000 websites’ worth of data.

TwitterYou can make a difference if you#learn2tweet.

Redditgood luck with that — If you succeed, youshould win an Oscar.

PinterestSpeaking of moms...

14.9% | 4.5% | 1.1% | 0.3% |

You can't guarantee you'll go viral, but if you try REALLY hard, YOU TOO CAN WIN THE INTERNET (or at least one corner of it)

they are very reliant on Facebook trafficTraffic could decrease significantly if Facebook changes its algorithms

In The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser indicates that websites are catering to their audience’s pre-existing views

They’re concealing disagreeableinformation

These numbers reflect the time period between March

and December of 2012

Most posts never reach 10k views

People share your content when it strikes a good balance between

emotionally stirring and entertaining.

onething